There's a void slowly forming for services that aren't directly associated with copyright infringement but won't answer to Old Media, either, to fit into.

I doubt I see it here, but Frontier was hesitating about joining the bandwagon. I don't know what they're at now.

All I know is, as long as people believe in a model of freedom in sufficiently high enough numbers, it will prevail. The only reason this happened is because people let themselves be told "even if you're not part of our problem, you deserve this".

The Bible never seemed clear to me on the exact when of the start of life.

So this debate may be an interpretation thing from fundamentalist angles.

Regardless, I don't see it as a strawman - the argument is represented somewhat correctly. I do see it as dishonest, however - there's a lot more to the argument from the pro-life side than just what was said (both in and out of the quote).

What do you believe it would take to make Linux a mainstream OS on the conventional consumer desktop? We've already seen broad enough server adoption to not have to worry about being seen there and mobile is good with Android (albeit often not realized by consumers)... So how do we get desktops finally claimed?... Or have we missed that boat long, long ago?

Everyone is at risk of becoming marginalized by none other than Android, and the risks associated in general here suggest to fight to not become marginalized. One way to do that is to slap your entire body on Android's business table and get in their way - which, basically, with trade blocks and so forth Apple has done in many cases across the globe with this.

It caused a dent but didn't slow it down much (please remember that the presented figures are net average across quarters):http://www.businessinsider.com/mobile-platform-market-share-2012-8

Yes, Apple has some solid - if at times overpriced - products and has a market spread. That doesn't save them from the dangers of getting swallowed like RIM as Android grows seemingly unbounded.

If there's any takeaway from any market at all for milking cor the money, it's that if you can plan for obsolescence, you do it from the get go.

I don't think there's any need to solder these things straight to the boards - I think it's a mutual arrangement between these major manufacturing companies to begin forcing hardware updates to happen faster and repairs to be impossible to have serviced by a private worker. Worse still, that to upgrade a single major part, you'll have to buy an entirely new machine.

See: Apple. Notorious for leaving out things that make no sense or making upgrades that feel superficial (like adding the camera that should have been there to start with in the iPad 2, anyone?). Also, not interested in the flamefest usually associated with that statement.

If you have a schedule to keep and need a reliable build system, Windows is a nightmare. Not that it can't be configured, but the amount of upkeep and virus scanners and security vulnerabilities to plug in Windows to have a safe environment for a corporate system doesn't compare well to installing the latest long term support version of Ubuntu, popping open the terminal, and typing "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install build-essential" In most cases with a machine that's not more than a few years old, it's about an hour to a respectable and stable platform that you can more-or-less trust completely.

And Microsoft is/was the fifth largest contributor to Linux not too long ago, if you want to keep the Microsoft ego when you migrate;)

Junior, West Virginia, a city so small it gets missed on a lot of maps, has a curfew law for everyone under the age of 21. Though not part of the curfew, usually suspicious vehicles or individuals are checked out quickly at night. Efforts to strike it down (all one of them that I've been told) failed.

The reason is that Junior has a problem with backwoods drug manufacturing and dealing. Like, massive, to the point that regular night time trafficking and drug use were becoming a safety issue for the entirety of the small town. Most people not on the main drag there are actually in the lower bracket of what we consider middle-class ~ around $17000 a year salary gross, but large when it only takes a steady $6000 to live in a rented home in the entire county, and often less.

The people being criminals were the richest people in town. They were not black. (other arguments on this story)

Worse still that the county seat recently had some of the cops outed, for what I'm told is complicity with the local drug market. Basically everyone and their brother has their hands up in that crap, and it's pretty harsh if you ever get tied up with it. These big cities should at least be grateful it's out in the open where it can be addressed.

I am not even sure where to begin with this. But republican/democrat/tea/etc doesn't matter when neither side seems wholly connected to the real world. Nor was it brought up, save in a reference to time as opposed to party.

When you're done taking cheap stabs at someone whose party you don't actually know (hint: independent, and I lean heavy voting to Democrat), I'll take a legitimate answer to the question.

While we're here, if you're not an American, get out of biting at our politics. Being such a huge consumer/service state and not an industrial/manufacturing state means a whole lot of bad news for the world if we collapse. I do honestly believe that the world can survive the financial collapse of this country - but, as the saying goes, "When America sneezes, the world catches the flu." I apologize for any country either truly suffering for our politicians' collective stupidity, or else truly blind enough to not view it as a worldly issue and not just a USA thing.

Enough. When you're done being divisional and ready to try to fix things or answer the simple "so, where to from here?", talk back. I am one person in a sea of many; even a proactive political activist can only do so much where I am right now. Unlike your implications, I am trying, but worried where this leads right now and not able to wade through the wash of bureaucratic crap.

What exactly does this mean for the citizens of the United States of America?

Out here in Middle of Nowhere, West Virginia, the poverty margin is 80% of all households, and it only rises as the economy gets worse. For a quick comparison, in Clinton's era it was "only" about 17% of all households. No jobs, no hope for the government, shops keep closing because they can't make enough to stay open... So what's the next thing those disconnected people in Washington are going to do to Main Street?

Read next_ghost's reply before this one. Do you know how hard it is to drill into a freshman's head that unresolving loops are bad, recursion is a beautiful thing, and "write once, use often"? These are what my professor is doing, along with some coding examples and theory. What I am doing is forcing them to apply that, and teaching the spots my professor misses. The fact that this is a freshman class means that it is that much more important that someone with a lot of time, a lot of desire, and a lot of patience teach them. My professor misses only the first point - I can give them as much as 6 times the amount of time they'd have for labs ~ actually, it will be two times, and then the rest in available tutoring if they "just don't get it" or want to learn extra ~ because I don't have three majors to oversee, a mountain of paperwork to file and grade and file, and messes to sort out left and right due to political nonsense inside of the system. All I have to do is teach what I have been told I will teach - and that's what makes me a bit better than many teachers and such. And you can add a lifetime studying the field and material to my merits. Why would you send any child to an institution if you didn't believe you could trust the institution? And if you want your child to learn, why would you complain if they were learning from the most experienced person available? Or would you rather they learn from somebody that hasn't got enough time to help them when they need it?

When you learn to challenge the norm even as you fight for survival, you learn what the true face of innovation is. Under your statements, so many things - including the United States of America - wouldn't exist. There's others; I'll leave you to search on your own.

Frankly... If we use that metric, of the some 40 or so Computing majors that I'm aware of, only about five really belong in the courses. I've taken Junior level classes since my first semester of freshman year - apparently to both my advisor and the professors over my major, it didn't occur to them that I was suit for the lower end classes. The class I'm helping with is an exception - I didn't need the theory or much of the history, but I did need the education in C++, and I personally asked to be put into it for that reason. Many of the people here expressing sentiments that CS students should tinker - yes I agree, but there's a point you reach where Linux isn't that far spread and can be scary to be faced with on your own. I learned by breaking it many, many, many times to get to my beautiful and slim Xubuntu in front of me running fluxbox and being more stable than even my professor's machine most of the time. It breaks when I make it break - and I do that usually once a break (eg ~ a holiday from classes) to help me learn a bit more. But, still ~ I agree. A lot of the students want the paycheck - not the work associated with it. When they stop seeing dollar signs and start seeing their own passions, they'll be in better shape... but I'm sad to say that I know people who are fifty and still haven't done so.